Microsoft announced the launch of its new seed fund and accelerator effort, Microsoft Ventures. The newly created project will offer mentorship, technology guidance, seed funding, and joint selling opportunities to worthy startups. In a blog post, Rahul Sood of Microsoft Startups said, “By unifying our various efforts, we will give entrepreneurs a single point of entry to engage with Microsoft. Startups have enough to worry about. We want to make access to us as intuitive and friction-free as possible. And for promising startups focused on enterprise, Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help in ways very few can match.”

Reading between the lines of Microsoft’s announcement, it seems evident that Microsoft Ventures is aiming at international startups. A series of new accelerators attached to Microsoft Ventures will be located not in the United States, but in Germany, Russia, and Brazil. They will join several other international accelerators Microsoft already operates in India, China, the United States, Israel, and France.